Dancing with the Tiger (27 page)

Touring the tunnel was more dog-like and humbling than he'd imagined, the two of them crawling on their knees. The looter rapped the chapel's foundation with his flashlight to show where he would bust through the floor. Anna looked strung-out in the half-light, like she hadn't slept, or maybe didn't cotton to being alone with a man underground.

“I tried to dig during the day, but the damn dog would bark. Still, at night, sometimes he showed up.”

“The dog?”

“Malone.”

“Where?”

The looter pointed up, then spun his finger around his temple, the universal sign of crazy. “He talks to himself and moans.”

Anna made a face. “He makes me sick. Constance invited me to dinner Saturday night.”

“That asshole invited you—”

“No, she did. But it's perfect. He'll be out of the chapel, and we'll make lots of noise.”

“You should make a toast. To . . . what's her name?”

“Constance.”

“To Constance and her husband, the rapist.”

“The impotent rapist.” Anna laughed, stopped herself. “I'm worried about the Tiger. What if the copy doesn't fool him?”

“Reyes doesn't remember the mask. He just remembers he wants it.”

Anna ran her hand along the chicken wire lining the ceiling. Powder showered her hair. “This is a great tunnel. You could go into business.”

“After the mask, I'm out of here.”

Anna asked where. He stroked his jaw, considering. This Anna was easy to talk to. Or maybe it was the tunnel. “Back to Colorado. Open a business.”

“Marry Chelo?” she teased.

He couldn't stop smiling—Chelo on the brain. He closed his mouth so she wouldn't see his fucked-up teeth.

“You went and saw her, didn't you?” Anna poked him. “I can see it in your face. You two made up.”

Not to jinx anything, but he was making plans. He'd fly back to Denver and introduce Chelo to his mother. She would cry she'd be so happy. She'd hang their coats in the closet, show them the powder room. That's what she liked to call it.
The powder room.
Chelo would blush, say something polite in English that she'd rehearsed.
It is a pleasure to meet you. You have a beautiful home.
On the patio, they'd circle
chairs, and for once, his mother wouldn't pepper him with questions. Beers in hand, they'd admire the Rockies, stone pyramids sugared up with snow. The looter would point out Pikes Peak and brag to Chelo how he'd once hiked twenty-six miles up and back, stood on the tippy top, and his mother would let that lie stand because he'd gotten close to the summit, close enough. His mother wouldn't ask directly about the baby—
Is that my grandchild?
—but she'd be hoping a girlfriend and baby would bring her prodigal son home. He'd leave the money he owed her by the coffeepot. Not explain a thing. Just let the magic stand for itself.

“Hey”—Anna tossed a stone in his lap—“where are you?”

He grinned. “Underground.”

“I need you to be alert. Saturday, seven o'clock. Be here. I'll be there.” She pointed up, behind her, to the house. “So long as the Tiger hasn't . . .” Anna dragged her thumb across her neck.

The girl looked unhinged; it made him nervous. He wasn't used to relying on girls for anything but sex and sandwiches. Getting over rape took time, the looter understood that much. His sister had been jumped once and she never liked men again, but maybe she never had. She'd always liked books more than people.

“You got your phone?”

“I got it, but I keep it turned off.” He pulled it out of his pocket, regarding it suspiciously.

“Well, turn it on. What if I need to reach you Saturday?” The looter hesitated, then moved the power switch. Anna fingered the ground, as if she'd lost something. “Maybe we should bless the tunnel.”

Before he could object, crazy Anna had crawled outside. A minute later, she was back with two sticks and a vine. “The tall stick is you and the shorter one is me. Our paths have crossed.”

She looked wild-eyed, but the looter went with it. “Give them to me.”

While Chelo was religious, this chick was making shit up on the fly. He wrapped the vine around the sticks like a Boy Scout. He was earning his Rudimentary Christianity in the Wild Merit Badge, his Humoring the Date-Raped Girl Merit Badge. He could add these to his earlier badges in Archaeology, Advanced Tunnel Building, and Scoring Drugs in a Foreign City. He was on his way to Eagle Scout.

The cross looked pretty damn official, he had to admit, resting against the tunnel. He didn't have the heart to tell Anna that the Virgin hadn't actually spoken to him in the cathedral. Digging had been his idea.

Anna eyed the cross. “Do you think it will protect us?”

In the distance, a donkey belched, as though he was tired of being a jackass, thank you, it was someone else's turn. The looter palmed Anna's boot.

“Protect us against Reyes?” He remembered a line from some country song, or maybe this was his own voice, a baby step closer to wise.

“I'm sorry, little darling,” he said. “We're too far gone for that.”

“¿Vivo?”

Reyes scratched his fake mustache. He was bald today, in a politician's suit, looking like Carlos Salinas, the exiled former president, the Harvard fucker who rigged ballot boxes, whose friends and relations often wound up dead. Reyes checked his reflection in the gilded mirror. Okay, maybe not Carlos Salinas. Maybe his chunky brother Raúl, the
cabrón
whose wife was caught withdrawing $84 million from a Swiss bank account.

“Alive?” Reyes repeated. “I wanted him dead.”

The drug lord poked his sandwich. Sausage with chili. Heartburn seared his chest. He burped up a tamale from three days before. Who needed to keep a diary with a gut like his?

“Are you an assassin or a nun? Do I need to show you?”

Reyes pointed a pistol out the open window, shot at nothing. Birds jumped out of the trees, discombobulated, flapping.

“Feo. That's me. Shooting you. Can you hear it? When I want to kill something, I kill it.”

He bit into his sandwich, opened his desk drawer, wiped his greasy fingers on a five-hundred-peso bill.

“How the hell would I know where he is? Look where drug addicts go. Just find him before I find you.”

Reyes propped his feet on the desk, leaned back. It was good when things went right, but also good when things went wrong. If everything always went right, he'd be out of a job.

“Feo? You know what?
Con todo respeto,
you're ugly. That's the only reason I keep you alive. You make me look good. You're my point of comparison.”

Reyes stood, shook out his pants.

“Maybe you saw wrong? Now you're backpedaling. If you saw his ghost, kill the ghost, too.”

Silence. The birds scurried back into the tree. He fired. They took off like crazy. Too much shit inside those birds. No manners at all.

“Feo, you're killing me, and I'm already dying.”

He clicked his laptop. His screen saver was his favorite prostitute, Suerte. Breasts like mountaintops. Made killer
pozole
. What they had was special. They would sit outside under a
palapa
at his villa in Acapulco and watch the sun drop into the sea, hire a gypsy guitarist to sing his heart out, sand everywhere, rum, hot tub, pinball, pork rinds, caviar, cocaine, trumpets, bodyguards, Viagra, helicopter humming. Yes, it was romantic. He was not ready to give up this life. Cancer could take a number. He was busy.

“
Cabrón
, that's a joke. I am not dying until I kill you. Then I can rest in peace.”

He caressed his chest. The birds were back in the trees. Let them shit in peace. He could be generous, but not with the digger. That emaciated, drug-addicted American asshole was going to learn a lesson he'd be too dead to use. Like the last Salinas brother, Enrique, found murdered in his car outside Mexico City, plastic bag over his head.

“Bring me the head of John the Baptist. . . . I saw it in a movie once. And a painting. Caravaggio. Ever heard of him? Stupid question.”

He rubbed his bad ear.

“Okay, if you can't bring me his head, then bring me your dick and I'll eat that for lunch. Good thing I'm not too hungry. Ha ha.”

A
patrón
had to be ugly. People expected it. It gave them courage to follow through. You could never talk to a person the way you talked to a video camera.

“I want him dead. More dead than last time. No more bedtime baths. Bullets.”

He hung up, called Suerte.

“I need you, baby. I don't want to die with you left undone.”

Emilio Luna sat shirtless in the shade, sanding heart boxes. Seeing Anna, he hopped into his house, returned wearing a shirt and carrying a turquoise mask. He handed it to Anna.

“La máscara es bonita.”
She bit her lip, fishing for the right words. “But it doesn't look the same as the other.”

The carver considered her critique before disagreeing. “Javier works stone in Mitla. They have worked stone for hundreds of years.”

“Yes, but the face looks different. Where's the photograph?”

The carver fetched it. Anna held photo and mask side by side.

“It is better this way,” the carver said. “You don't want an angry mask.”

Anna resisted the urge to smash the mask over his head. She was meeting the Tiger in two days. A dry breeze blew between them. She had no more money, so she tried flattery instead.

“Your brother is famous, a real artist. I know he can handle even the most delicate jobs. The two masks need to be . . .” The heat had melted her brain.
“Idénticas.”

The carver muttered something, prayer or curse, wiped his face with his shirttail. “Javier is away.”

“When will he return?”

“Depende.”

Anna wanted to climb into a heart box, close its perfect wooden door. She looked into his eyes. “If you do the work by Friday afternoon, I will be very content and will tell all my American friends about your remarkable masks.”

She hated herself as she said this. Emilio Luna waved away this stupidity, sat back on his stump and resumed sanding. Anna reeled with dizziness. She hadn't brought any water. She was hungry and had to pee.
I would be so grateful.
That was what she wanted to say. But the conditional of
agradecer
was beyond her, given the heat, her anxiety. Instead, she said the one thing that might persuade a Mexican carver to help a demanding gringa.

“
Por favor, señor
. It's a present for my mother.”

The man looked up, saw something in her face he recognized. That she was lying but had no choice.

“Viernes por la tarde.”

Anna thanked him, turned, stopped cold. Salvador was leaning against the fence, wearing a gas station shirt embroidered
BOB
.

He sized her up, gave her a half smile, as if he found her both charming and despicable. “You are a good liar.”

“So are you.”

“Me?” He reached for her hand. Anna spun away. Salvador followed her to the street.

“I came to apologize,” he said. “I have a bad temper. I can help you sell the mask to a good place for a reasonable price. We can work together, if you let me help.”

Anna wasn't ready to relinquish her anger.

“You're too late. The mask is locked in Thomas Malone's chapel, but we've got a plan to get it out.”

“We?”

“The looter and I.”

“What looter?”

“Christopher Maddox. He's a twigger, a rather
famous
twigger in some circles.” Seeing his confusion, she added, “A meth addict who digs relics.” Salvador looked horrified. “But he's straight now and he's digging a tunnel under the chapel. It's almost done.”

“You think that is safe?”

“The tunnel?”

“The twigger.”

Anna shrugged. “I trust him.
He
hasn't lied to me yet. You could have told me about your girlfriend, or is that how things roll with cool Mexican painters? Everything easy.
Todo azul.
”

She'd picked up this expression somewhere. Everything's cool. All blue.

“What girlfriend?”

“The
fresa
.” Anna fluffed her hair. “Strawberry” was a disparaging term for a spoiled Mexican woman.

“My sister?”

Anna scrunched her face. “C'mon. Your sister?” She imitated his accent.
“I was once asked to be a father, but I declined. One must know his limits.”

“Híjole.”
He looked down the road after a chicken. “You drove here?”

“I took the bus.” This, too, seemed to be his fault. The heat was his fault. The Tiger was his fault. He had not helped her in any way.

“I need to show you something,” he said. “After that, if you still want to go, you can.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Uncle Emilio is a good man, but he can't keep a secret.”

Anna kept her eyes on the fence, debating. She wanted to believe in him, in someone, and she really didn't want to take the bus.

They walked to his car. The seats were scalding. He fished up a CD. “Since we are fighting, we will listen to music.”

Mercedes Sosa sang “María, María” as they drove out of town. Anna's father had this CD. As a girl, Anna decided it was the world's saddest song. María deserved to live and love like other people but couldn't. She didn't have the force, the dreams, the desire, the grace . . . Anna ticked through her own shortcomings, one for each telephone pole.
I am impatient. I drink too much. I want to be the most beautiful woman in the room. I pretend to be happier than I am. I want to believe in God, but don't know where to start. I love to travel, but have no sense of direction. I can't imagine being a mother. I am careless with everything but words. I hate to spend money, and worry I will run out. I don't listen when people tell me their names. I sleep with men I don't like because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I'd rather be unhappy than cause someone else unhappiness, but then I resent people who make me unhappy. Sometimes I look at people I love and feel nothing at all.

To be Anna. To be loved. To be loved as Anna.

It would require a fucking saint.

—

He took her
to a bank in the city. Miss Venezuela was helping a customer. She wore a navy blue suit and her hair was piled into a crown, fallen strands artfully framing her face.

When her customer left, she came around her desk to greet them, kissing Salvador's cheek. In that instant, Anna hated them both, for being Mexican, for having more in common with each other than with her, for leaving her out of the cheek-kissing world of colonial Mexico with its church bells and picturesque decay.

“Victoria, this is Anna, the friend I mentioned. Anna, this is Victoria.”

He said this in English. The implication was clear: Victoria's English was better than Anna's Spanish. Victoria had it all working. Victoria was Mexican and beautiful and spoke English and was pregnant with Salvador's child. Victoria probably stuffed her own tamales. She offered Anna her hand, soft as a bird. Her femininity made Anna want to howl.

“Anna observed you were pregnant.” Salvador's voice had an edge.

Anna glared at him. Heat fanned down her body.

“She wants to know if your baby is mine.”

Victoria tilted her head, confused. Salvador clarified. “She saw us in the
zócalo
last week. You were crying and I was holding your hands. She thinks you are my girlfriend.”

Victoria gave a sympathetic tsk-tsk, as if to remind Anna that any Mexican woman has more in common with any American woman than with any Mexican—or American—man.

“Oh no, Anna.” Victoria shook her index finger. “This is a mistake.
Salvador is not my boyfriend. The father of my baby is an even bigger
cabrón
than my brother.”

—

For dinner,
they ate rice and beans, and avocados sprinkled with cilantro and lime. Anna could not stop touching him, his hands, his shoulder, his lips. They discovered a scorpion the size of Anna's pinkie climbing the wall. With a piece of cardboard, Salvador tipped it into a jam jar filled with rubbing alcohol. The creature floated to the surface. A snow globe. Deadly. Clear.

Victoria had considered an abortion. The day Anna had seen them, she'd asked Salvador to drive her to Mexico City, but he had urged her to wait a few days, and in that time, she had changed her mind. Telling her mother had been difficult, but a grandchild was coming, and the excitement of this fact overshadowed their mother's contempt for the baby's father, whom she called “the rhinoceros from Monterrey.”

Anna and Salvador agreed to start over. She told him about her father's collection, the looter, the Tiger. He told her stories about art disappearing in Mexico, none more egregious than the theft of Lord Pakal's death mask, which disappeared from the National Museum of Anthropology, along with one hundred other artifacts, on Christmas Eve in 1985. No alarm. No fingerprints. Almost four years later, the jade mask was discovered in an abandoned house in Acapulco. The thieves were two vet school dropouts who had climbed through an air-conditioning duct.

“Your looter friend is part of the problem. He steals from the dead.”

“He was an addict. He's getting better.”

“A drug addict does not change day to night. You put too much trust in him. One day, he will pull a gun.”

“You have a better idea?”

Salvador looked away.

They couldn't agree on a course of action. Practically. Morally. In the United States, the mask would be safe, but Salvador was adamant that Mexican art should stay in Mexico. “Once objects are taken from their context, history is lost.”

“You're saying we shouldn't have museums?”

“We need museums for the same reason we need zoos, but animals still need to live in the wild. Ancient people were buried with treasures. Should you dig up every grave when there is no money and no place to care for these things? We don't have to
see
everything. We can imagine them. We can wonder. We can leave them for someone else.”

“But the mask was already dug up.”

He stood, started to pace. “Right. That is the problem. Now it has to
belong
to someone. It used to belong just to itself.”

Anna was getting irritated, too. There was no right answer. “Okay. Let's leave it with Thomas Malone. He'll watch over it.”

Salvador laughed sharply. “I can ask around, see if any of my museum contacts would accept it.”

“Why wouldn't they?”

“Would you want to be on duty when Reyes arrives to take back his treasure?”

Anna frowned. “Until we have the mask, it's all moot.”

“Moot?” Salvador scowled. He was in no mood to learn new words. He stood up, sat down again, took her hands. “Forget the mask,” he said. “Tell me more about you. Tell me how your mother died in Mexico—”

“I've forgotten so much.”

He said tell me what you remember.

—

Her father was ill with a stomach bug
. Rose had taken Anna to La Esperanza to pick up some masks. It had rained all day, but her mother was cheerful. Every time Rose popped back in the car, her flushed face looked younger. Anna sat with a bag of chips, licking chili off her fingers, eyeing a cardboard box holding several scary masks they'd bought earlier that day. Anna had asked her mother why the carvers never made princess masks. Her mother had promised to find her a mask she liked, and now this promise had escalated into a challenge. Rose looked all afternoon without success, and her expression tightened with each disappointment.

“Let's go home,” Anna had whined. “To the hotel with Daddy.”

“You mean the bar?” Her mother's eyes snapped. She touched Anna's knee. “Sorry. I'm going to find you a nice mask.”

Eventually, she gave up, headed back. The road narrowed to barely two lanes. It was raining. Anna drew hearts in the misty windows.

“Be careful,” Anna said. She was pretty sure she'd said that.

Her mother flexed her fingers over the wheel. “I am. Very careful.” Or maybe she'd said, “Don't worry. I've got it.”

Anna's eyes closed. She was cold and wanted to be back at the hotel, eating a quesadilla, watching dubbed cartoons.

“How much longer?”

“Halfway. Take a catnap.”

There was no quicker way to kill the desire for a nap than to be told
to take one. Her mother pressed the brakes, cursed softly. “Someone's slid off the road.”

A van had skidded perpendicular, blocking their lane and half the opposite one. Its hazard lights blinked red.

“Don't stop. You can get by.”

“We'll fall into the ravine.” Her mother shifted into park. “Wait here. I'll see if they can move. If not, we'll have to turn around.”

“I don't want to go back.” Anna pouted.

Her mother looked into Anna's eyes. “Me, neither.”

Those were her mother's last words to her:
Me, neither.
Anna had been complaining about a situation her mother could not change, and her mother had reminded her that she didn't like it, either, that neither of them wanted to go back to the village, a place where you couldn't find a beautiful mask no matter how hard you tried. Years later, Anna read more into those words. Maybe her mother didn't care much about masks. Maybe she was exuberant that day because she liked having a quest of her own, instead of traipsing behind her husband.

Her mother opened the car door and ran. The van's driver lowered his window. Her mother gestured to their car. Her pants were getting wet. Rain was such a crazy idea, if you thought about it—clean water falling from the sky. The van started up. Why had it stopped if it wasn't broken down? Why hadn't the driver righted his vehicle and driven on? Her mother was still talking, practicing all those verbs she'd memorized.
They're like a song. You have to sing them.
How many verbs did a mother use in a day? Eat, sleep, work, want, dream, listen, teach, thank, hold, hope, comfort, be.

They could have left earlier. They could have driven around.

Five minutes earlier or later and her mother would not have been standing in the road when a drunk man in a dented truck swerved
around the Ramseys' car and lost control. Five minutes earlier or later and her mother's soul would not have flown over the mountain on the back of an eagle.